Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead

I read once that the hurt of letting a person walk out of your life shouldn't leave a scar or sway you from leaving them, but rather make you realize that if you wanted to be with the wrong person so bad, how beautiful it will be when the right person comes along. Letting the wrong person go is hard. There is so much pain involved and fear of what life will be like when that person is gone, especially if that person has been in your life for a while. We get into a routine and settling for familiar or comfortable is easier than the risk of never finding love again. We stay in relationships with the wrong person and tolerate being treated poorly because we don't want to be alone, we are manipulated into believing no one else will love us, we think we will never feel that way about anyone else, for financial reasons, or we like the image of the relationship. I don't know what real love looks like for everyone, but I can say that real love manifests when there are no selfish feelings involved and when any image of what we want the person to be or what we want to portray to the people around us disappears. Real love doesn't ask whats in it for me. It occurs when manipulation stops and when we think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to us, giving unconditionally because we love the person, not because we want the person to love us. The other person's happiness is just as important as our own. We accept another for their true self and don't twist them to create our own version of the person. We love them for their real image rather that the reflection of ourselves that we find in them. We all deserves real love and it is out there for anyone willing to find it. The pain of leaving the wrong person will be worth it when we find the right person and get a taste of what real love feels like. We just have to find courage to leave an unsatisfactory relationship. There will always be love waiting for us and when we are ready to find it, it will come into our lives. We just have to let the wrong person walk out of our lives to make room for the beauty of the right person.

I am not a Robot

It's easy to go through life on autopilate. When life gets hard, it takes little work to fall into a routine and walk mindlessly through each day. It doesn't take more than a minimal amount of energy to roll out of bed in the morning, go for the daily run on the same route, go to a dead end job that takes no brain power to do, come home and spend time with a significant other that you are settling for, go to bed and then do it all again the next day. This lifestyle is comfortable because it's stagnant and there are no risks. We are guarenteed to succeed because there are no challenges to bring us down. Why try something new when you know you can do the things that you are doing? When we start setting goals, trying new things, and breaking out of the routine, there is a fear of failure or a fear of the unknown. Lately I've been finding myself falling into this routine. My life has been stagnant the past couple of months and I have myself to blame. I have a list of goals about ten goals and I've only started working towards the ones that take the littlest amount of energy and don't diverge far from my normal routine. I look at the list every day and expect that just reading them is going to magically make them happen. Unfortunately that's not how it works. I'm not going to wake up one day without ever practicing and be able to play the mandolin or go out climbing after no training and be able to clean send a 5.11. Goals take work and you have to put energy towards them. I'm usually a very goal driven person. When I set my mind to something, I make it happen, but after the recent Peace Corps disappointment, I got so down that I felt like I wasn't capable of doing anything. I looked at my list of goals and they seemed impossible and like routes to failure and more disappointment. Routine was easier than figuring out how to accomplish my goals. My comfort zone wasn't a happy place to be, but at least there was no disappointment. I settled for the robotic lifestyle until recently I was going for a long bike ride and I realized that the human mind is designed to be in constant change. We are suppose to learn and push the boundaries of our comfort zone to live a completely statisfying life. The times I have been the happiest in my life have been times that I have overcome conflict and accomplished one of my goals. Being a robot was more devistating to my mental health than any sort of failure. Fighting to make our goals happen may be hard at first and there will be challenges. We may even fail, but staying dedicated and pushing forward will pay off with time and changes will start to occur and there will be success. The trick is knowing that failures teach us how to find success. Success is always there, it may just take some extra searching to find. In the words of Confucious, "When it is obvious that the goals can't be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps."